No sound with new 5.1 card

[user]

Hello all,

I had been reading about what cards worked best with Linux, and determined that a 5.1 Diamond Xtreme was my best bet… cheap, and lots of people had said it worked flawlessly.

After installing opensuse(after installing the card, and deactivating the onboard audio) - I booted. Tada!! Sound!!! I heard the login sound… I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Then, I tried to play music with amarok. No go… banshee? No go. Firefix off a flash movie? No go.

I hear the speakers flicker when loading suse… when I do a failsafe, I see it load the mod fine. I can even hear sound when logging on/off, but I can’t hear sound otherwise.

Please help; any command you need me to type, I’d be more than willing to.

Thanks so much.

Here’s the alsa info script I saw someone run in another thead, perhaps it would be useful.

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=91db579c6a6e8d2cd284c78212b884288e2c04ea

Here is my lsmod(See this in some other sound threads):

van@linux-g7pj:~> lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
cifs                  255816  1
nls_utf8                2176  1
joydev                 11408  0
st                     39036  0
ide_disk               14680  0
ide_cd_mod             34000  0
ip6t_LOG                7196  7
xt_tcpudp               3624  2
xt_pkttype              2168  3
ipt_LOG                 6828  8
xt_limit                3196  15
snd_pcm_oss            48512  0
snd_mixer_oss          16824  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_midi            8416  0
snd_seq_midi_event      8344  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_opl3_synth         14428  0
snd_seq_midi_emul       6872  1 snd_opl3_synth
binfmt_misc            10084  1
snd_seq                61520  4 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_opl3_synth,snd_seq_midi_emul
af_packet              20296  0
ip6t_REJECT             6040  3
nf_conntrack_ipv6      24728  4
ip6table_raw            2472  1
xt_NOTRACK              2168  4
ipt_REJECT              3496  3
xt_state                2584  8
iptable_raw             2776  1
iptable_filter          3416  1
ip6table_mangle         3144  0
nf_conntrack_netbios_ns     2856  0
nf_conntrack_ipv4      12808  4
nf_conntrack           80496  5 nf_conntrack_ipv6,xt_NOTRACK,xt_state,nf_conntrack_netbios_ns,nf_conntrack_ipv4
ip_tables              19480  2 iptable_raw,iptable_filter
ip6table_filter         3256  1
ip6_tables             21064  4 ip6t_LOG,ip6table_raw,ip6table_mangle,ip6table_filter
x_tables               23392  11 ip6t_LOG,xt_tcpudp,xt_pkttype,ipt_LOG,xt_limit,ip6t_REJECT,xt_NOTRACK,ipt_REJECT,xt_state,ip_tables,ip6_tables
ipv6                  292680  27 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6,ip6table_mangle
cpufreq_conservative     8400  0
cpufreq_userspace       4220  0
cpufreq_powersave       2264  0
powernow_k8            14252  1
fuse                   57856  3
loop                   17284  0
dm_mod                 73920  0
snd_cmipci             39840  4
gameport               13128  1 snd_cmipci
snd_pcm                91872  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_cmipci
snd_page_alloc          9832  1 snd_pcm
snd_opl3_lib           12856  2 snd_opl3_synth,snd_cmipci
snd_timer              24984  4 snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib
snd_hwdep               9088  1 snd_opl3_lib
snd_mpu401_uart         8840  1 snd_cmipci
snd_rawmidi            25808  2 snd_seq_midi,snd_mpu401_uart
rtc_cmos               13016  0
snd_seq_device          8620  5 snd_seq_midi,snd_opl3_synth,snd_seq,snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi
r8169                  32268  0
snd                    73576  20 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_opl3_synth,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq,snd_cmipci,snd_pcm,snd_opl3_lib,snd_timer,snd_hwdep,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
k8temp                  5176  0
rtc_core               21412  1 rtc_cmos
floppy                 62968  0
rtc_lib                 3576  1 rtc_core
soundcore               8384  1 snd
button                  8344  0
pcspkr                  3080  0
mii                     6040  1 r8169
nvidia               8147336  36
i2c_nforce2             8624  0
i2c_core               35216  2 nvidia,i2c_nforce2
sr_mod                 15956  0
cdrom                  36216  2 ide_cd_mod,sr_mod
sg                     35392  0
usbhid                 52528  0
hid                    41232  1 usbhid
ff_memless              8768  1 usbhid
sd_mod                 35272  5
crc_t10dif              2168  1 sd_mod
ehci_hcd               54020  0
ohci_hcd               35300  0
usbcore               195920  4 usbhid,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
edd                    10288  0
ext3                  140776  3
mbcache                 9500  1 ext3
jbd                    61752  1 ext3
fan                     6032  1
ide_pci_generic         4668  0
amd74xx                 7168  0
ide_core              115084  4 ide_disk,ide_cd_mod,ide_pci_generic,amd74xx
ata_generic             6060  0
thermal                24408  1
processor              49104  2 powernow_k8,thermal
thermal_sys            14352  3 fan,thermal,processor
hwmon                   3736  2 k8temp,thermal_sys
ahci                   34484  4
pata_amd               13708  0
libata                183248  3 ata_generic,ahci,pata_amd
scsi_mod              178296  5 st,sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata
dock                   14180  1 libata
van@linux-g7pj:~>                                           

Here is another command I saw used frequently… “rpm -qa | grep alsa”:

van@linux-g7pj:~> rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.18-6.13
alsa-oss-1.0.17-1.43
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.17-1.37
alsa-1.0.18-8.9
alsa-plugins-1.0.18-6.13
alsa-utils-1.0.18-6.4
van@linux-g7pj:~>

[oldcpu]

@pgreptom

After installing opensuse(after installing the card, and deactivating the onboard audio) - I booted. Tada!! Sound!!! I heard the login sound… I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Then, I tried to play music with amarok. No go… banshee? No go. Firefix off a flash movie? No go.

I hear the speakers flicker when loading suse… when I do a failsafe, I see it load the mod fine. I can even hear sound when logging on/off, but I can’t hear sound otherwise.

OK, first, the log on and log off sound you hear is not an adequate speaker test. I recommend you go here to the openSUSE troubleshooting guide, and use BOTH the “speak-tests” that are listed there: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE - how to test your speakers

Typically I recommend users test with and with out headphones, and test as a regular user and test as root.

The fact that you hear log in and log out sound suggests your basic sound already functions, … which is good.

I do not have your hardware, nor have I ever used hardware like the hardware on your PC, but from the diagnostic script you ran (alsa-info.sh) I note your mixer does not appear to be set up properly.
!!Amixer output
!!-------------
!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [CMI8738]
Card hw:0 ‘CMI8738’/‘C-Media CMI8738 (model 55) at 0xcc00, irq 18’
Mixer name : ‘CMedia PCI’
Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Front Left: Playback 17 55%]
Front Right: Playback 17 55%]
Simple mixer control ‘3D Control - Switch’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘PCM’,0
Front Left: Playback 0 0%] [on] Capture [off]
Front Right: Playback 0 0%] [on] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control ‘Line’,0
Front Left: Playback 0 0%] off] Capture [off]
Front Right: Playback 0 0%] off] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 5V’,0
Mono: Playback on]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 Copyright’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 In Monitor’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 In Phase Inverse’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 In Select’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 In Valid’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 Loop’,0
Mono: Playback off]
Simple mixer control ‘IEC958 Output’,0
Mono: Playback off]I highlighted in red items that appear wrong. For basic sound testing, moving your PC’s volume up to 95% (ie both Master and PCM volume) and once basic sound is established, move those down to levels that get rid of distortion and don’t shatter the windows, and don’t blow the speakers. Note I state basic sound and not 5.1 sound. I do not have 5.1 sound hardware, so I can not help with 5.1 sound.

I note you have IEC958 (digital audio) on , but then off in all its controls. That appears illogical, and I do not know if that will cause problems.

Also, if after fixing your mixer, you get the speaker-tests to give you sound (and hear the lady’s voice saying ‘FRONT LEFT’,‘FRONT RIGHT’ five times) but your applications still don’t give you sound, then you could have a codec problem.

In which case, I recommend that you immediately setup your Software Package Manager with 4 repositories (repos). Just 4. No others. None. Those 4 are OSS, Non-OSS, Update, and Packman. There is guidance here for setting up those 4 under openSUSE-11.1 : Repositories/11.1 - openSUSE-Community Again, just 4. The reason being is adding more can case dependency conflicts, and in some cases simply have multimedia stop working. Only after one learns how to resolve the difficulties that can come from too many repos should one add more. In particular Do NOT add videolan.

Once those 4 are added, you can go to YaST > Software > Software Management and change the “filter” to “search” and search for Packman packaged versions (to replace Novell/SuSE-GmbH packaged versions) of amarok, amarok-xine, amarok-packman, libxine1, xine-ui, smplayer, mplayer-plugin-in, libffmepg0, ffmpeg0, w32codec-all, libquicktime0, xvidcore, xvidcore4. You can tell packman packaged versions as they have “pm” in the version number. That should get you started.

Good luck !